Category Archives: Writer and Reader

Reiter’s Block Year in Review, Part 1: Best Poetry


Loyal readers, I apologize for the three-week blog hiatus. I was writing 30 poems and poem-like scribblings for the month of November to raise money for The Center for New Americans, a literacy program for immigrants in Western Massachusetts. You can still sponsor me through the end of 2011 here. (I’m still writing poems, just in case.)

This year-end roundup will be posted in several parts since there are so many good reads that I want to highlight. Today, I’ll be recommending a few poetry books that caught my attention.

Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg, eds., Gurlesque: The new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics (Saturnalia Books, 2010).
Unicorns! Masturbation! Dead cows! As Glenum writes in her introduction to this anthology, “The Gurlesque describes an emerging field of female artists…who, taking a page from the burlesque, perform their femininity in a campy or overtly mocking way. Their work assaults the norms of acceptable female behavior by irreverently deploying gender stereotypes to subversive ends.”

Juliet Cook, Thirteen Designer Vaginas (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2011).
Punning, darkly playful, experimental poems inspired by vaginal reconstructive surgery websites. “They can’t quiver and whimper/if they’re not real, he said, referring to some breasts./We all know they’re implants, not live puppies”. Chapbook cover even has pasted-on fake jewels. What more could you want for $5? Visit Cook’s website for links to other titles, including a free download of Mondo Crampo.

Jason Schossler, Mud Cakes (Bona Fide Books, 2011).
Winner of the 2010 Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Prize, this quietly powerful autobiographical collection chronicles a Midwestern Gen-X boyhood, where exciting dreams of Star Wars and movie monsters give way to the more drab and painful struggles of his parents’ divorce, and the losing battle of his Catholic conscience against teenage lust. Schossler narrates the essential facts of a moment that stands in for an entire relationship, allowing the reader to make the connections that his childhood self couldn’t see.

Nick Demske, Nick Demske (Fence Books, 2010).
Insane sonnets compiled from the data-stream of our decadent culture. Read my blog review here.

Winners of the Alabama State Poetry Society David Kato Prize for Poems about GLBT Human Rights


The Alabama State Poetry Society offers a twice-yearly contest with a variety of themed prizes sponsored by different individuals and poetry organizations. For the Fall 2011 award series, I sponsored the David Kato Prize for poems about the human rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people. (Prizes: $50, $30, $20, plus HM’s at judge’s discretion.) The award honors a Ugandan gay activist who was murdered this year. With the permission of the authors and the ASPS, I am pleased to publish the winners below.

First Prize:

what more is there to say
by Barry Marks

oh mama mama
oh god mama
how can i not believe
believe you made me what i am
you and papa
god papa what do i say
what do i say when i say who i am
who am i to question you mama
when you say i should not
i should not fit myself into another self
it is not enough that a self is warm
is loving is wanting my self
the self you made the way i am
the way you are
you must be
as i must be
who is anyone to say
to say this does not fit there
or there or where i do not fit
do not fit whose formula
you formed me god mama
god papa should i speak of
god papa on god mama to make
baby god me or was god mama
on top how irreverent how shameful
to think of a god mama god papa
oh my god
mama oh my god
papa if that is so awful
shameful then why should anyone
throw his her mind into my pants
my heart my private self i am
god baby just like they are
just like you are
oh god
mama
oh god
papa
i love you both
i love god
god loves me
what more
is there
to say

****

Second Prize

A Good Holt
by John Foust

I am giving you these words to savor your heartaches.
Am I? I give words to you, salt and pepper, heartaches.

I talk about cold morning and the lift they bring.
The cold splashing of the springs assault icy heartaches.

Standing in the wind waiting for the bus all my life,
It is good to feel warm hands on the vault of heartaches.

Running, all the time running with fare to catch love.
The doors open stepping up, I jolt fares into heartaches.

On the sidewalk, in the coats and swishing, I am alone.
Walking down the street, wrenches bolt tight heartaches.

Row strong in the winter waters of the human stream,
Keep warm, keep a good holt on your hidden heartaches.

****

Third
Prize:

daymares
by Janet Anderson

consider the bliss sitting
absolutely still, your
mind completely numbed.
no free-fall ideas trickling
off into childhood, or tomorrows,
only anonymity.

uneasy to be human, to feel
like an outcast with a brutal
imagination. To beat and beat
yourself against your slab of mind,
the convolution of colors raking
into a long, white, outstretched reach,
the flame groping for the spread
of fire, the floating, diving words
wanting out, freedom
from discrimination, freedom
to be, to clam your own bones
to nest in.

****

First Honorable Mention:

Closet Elegy
by Susan Luther

In the middle of the night I felt the urge.
Got up, and went down the hall. It was not
my house, but — not exactly strange either. I knew
where to find the necessary door. Business finished,
I turned the doorknob back into the room
I had come from. which… wasn’t. Was unfamiliar
hostile darkness — half awake, a blank abyss, nothing
to know who or where I was by, like the time,
staring at Uniform Reality in the reception line
I forgot my own name. No shred of illumination,
adjusted vision. Only black on black
vertigo, the floor capsizing underneath.
Is this how you felt when Alzheimer’s first
augured holes — boarded entrances — into your mind?
How you felt before, under the sentence of your daughter’s
(to you) banish-imperative not-in-my-house bad news? Is this
how she felt you felt have felt feel, others feel, trapped
in telescoping rooms of denial panic incomprehension
difference Open the door Open the door OPEN THE DOOR

****

Second Honorable Mention

the right to be very human
by Catherine Moran

And I say,

being human holds all the glamour
of a rainy picnic on Mars.
We have to fashion our own umbrellas
to hold the elements at bay,
and juggle to keep
the food warm and ready.
All the while we project a certain image
demanded by the social circle.
Those who don’t look like they belong,
are left drifting into puddles
and being soaked by stray drops.

And I say,

everyone has a right to be warm and dry
at the picnic.
Loving and caring for another person
is the most basic human gift
we can bestow on each other.
Sexual orientation
matters little when it comes to kindness.
And when one person
touches
the deep humanity of another with a spirit
of love and concern,
we are being the best creatures we can be.

And I say,

what people wear or
with whom they prefer to spend their time
become such a minor issue.
In a world where humanity can
dish out meanness like a leftover casserole,
any semblance of compassion
is as welcome as fresh thyme.
Being human has its drawbacks.
If we can open the umbrella a little wider,
the picnic can progress
with everyone dry
and plenty to eat.

****

Third Honorable Mention

Prometheus Bound
by Caren Renee Davidson

You met the cold hammer
Cast from Vulcan’s own fury.
You chose to have the fires
Show the sameness
of your face.
You are still Prometheus
the Teacher.

My Poems “Inheriting a House Fire” and “touching story” in Solstice Literary Magazine


Solstice Literary Magazine, an online quarterly, selected two of my poems as the “Editor’s Pick” from their contest submissions this year. “Inheriting a House Fire” and “touching story” appear in their Summer 2011 issue. Launched in 2009, Solstice has published such authors as Kathleen Aguero, DeWitt Henry, Leslea Newman, and Dzvinia Orlowsky. Enjoy (if that’s the right word?) “touching story” below.

touching story

not the turn to gold but touch he
wanted most, no object that
flesh of his
supper gelled to shining
ore lumps when he bit, that sepals
stiffened on the rose
like nipples bared to frost. not
the lark that lasted but the scar
its moneyed weight peeled
down the tree. not the trophy
hound, that sudden andiron
dropped from his lap,
but the fox, stinking, invisible,
unchased.
                
myth to asses’ ears,
no nodding velveted clefts
named his errata, not a page
or armed barber kissed the riverbed
to scandalize the reeds
into singing true. and when his
   daughter,
as he’d tell it, sprang
into his transmuting arms, and after,
there was no god to take the
   hardening gift away.

Poemize the Patriarchy!



I’ve just begun reading Kathryn Joyce’s expose of evangelical doctrines about female submission, Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. Simultaneously, I discovered the Random Poem Generator. The “poemized” ad copy for Vision Forum’s Heroines of Christ’s Kingdom Paper Doll Set reveals some interesting subtexts:

Doll voices inside list,
catalog mullins site bluebehemoth!
jackson two switch wrist,
an adams as behemoth.

Christ stock adelina six,
daughters stock older paper.
eliza shopping women fix,
calvin paper for taper.

Online god online six,
retail outlet reviews stock.
dolls wives anne fix,
regular jackson vision cock.


Carolyn Howard-Johnson: “Inevitably Walls”


Carolyn Howard-Johnson is a widely published poet and the author of several marketing manuals for writers, including The Frugal Book Promoter. Her site The New Book Review features original and reprinted reviews, to help authors maximize the exposure of a good review. (This month, they’ve re-posted a review of my chapbook Swallow that first appeared on the Ampersand Books website.)

Carolyn’s poem “Inevitably Walls” was recently accepted for the first issue of the literary journal Solo Novo Wall Scrawls. The journal is published by Solo Novo Press, Carpinteria, CA and North Wilkesboro, NC. Editor Paula C. Lowe says, “‘Wall Scrawls’ is inspired by an Iowa farmhouse wall. Eighty years abandoned and orphaned, it is a hive of letters, a busy kitchen of words. Every kid with a can of spray paint somehow gets here and leaves his or her native tongue on the walls.” They’ve kindly given me permission to share it below.

Inevitably Walls

Near Jerusalem’s edge razorwire
coils above concrete slabs that trace

an imaginary line across the brutal
desert much like a wall we found

years ago when we lost our way
in a dark forest somewhere

in Germany, cried when we
found it there—unexpected—and it

not so different

from one in Ireland we visited only
last year, walls to cleave Irish

from Irish. Foreign walls, chains-linked,
wire-barbed, Krylon smeared walls

not so different

from our own, that fence that crawls
from Baja, through mountain passes

along the Rio Grande. Walls. Feeble, useless,
unholy billboards. Even poets

once wrote of mending walls…


Two Poems from an Anthology to Benefit Refugees


Yes, loyal readers, it has been a long time since I blogged. I’ve been refreshing my vocation as a Christian writer at the Glen Workshop East, an experience I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who has wondered how the identities “Christian” and “writer” can coexist harmoniously.

While I sort out my thoughts from this high-intensity week, please enjoy the following excerpt from The Last Stanza, a new poetry anthology edited by Dan Savery Raz of Danscribe Books. The Last Stanza features work by the members of StanzAviv, a creative collective of writers associated with Bar Ilan University and Tel Aviv University. StanzAviv members come from Israel, USA, UK, France, Canada, Latvia and beyond. Poets include Dara Barnat from Tel Aviv University’s English Faculty, literary translator Sabine Huynh, and Israeli poet Michal Pirani. The book also features atmospheric shots of Tel Aviv taken by award-winning photographer Nitzan Hafner. All proceeds from the sale of this book go to the ARDC (African Refugee Development Center), an NGO in south Tel Aviv that provides shelter, education, counseling and advice to refugees and asylum seekers in Israel. The ARDC was founded by refugees for refugees.

****


Finally
by Yedida Bernstein Goren

i am refugee, you were this too, yes? my friend
i ran, climbed, snaked to shaky part of your borderwall
oh israel holy-israel my mind breaking into pieces of glass
i hear jews are good people
months i journey hide every some hours
lost friends, brother, child back home
you also lose family shot at by crazed soldiers, yes?
we hear you did long long time ago 60 years
walking and walking and walking and walking
they aim bullets at me
they rape my woman
i stand there
my eyes stretch into my forehead, my pupils fall out my eyelids
i hold back the skyscream
trudge on with wife on back
over last sandkilometer
i reach you, finally, oh Israel
scarred, falling, hungry
you send me to holding station
like prison
you look down on me and wife
you so shy of kindtouch
so short on welcomewords
weeks months later
you tell us to leave on big plane
you pay
where, kind officer, do you think we should return to?

****

easyBank.com
by Dan Savery Raz

To check the balance of your account, press one.
To transfer money from one account to another, press two.
For lost or stolen cards, press three.
If you would like to pay your outstanding balance, press four.
If you like the word ‘muesli’, press five.
If you get scared by thunder and lightning storms at night,
   press six.
If you believe in a monotheistic God, press seven.
If you are an atheist or believe in many gods, such as the
   sun god Helios, press eight.
For reincarnation, press nine.
To listen to some ancient Tibetan Buddhist chants, press
   ten.
Trotskyites, press eleven.
Hermaphrodites, twelve.
For information on the displacement of the Aboriginal population
   of Australia in the late 18th century, press thirteen.
If you just want to get stoned, press fourteen
followed by the hash key.
If you treat your pet dog better than most human beings,
   press fifteen.
People that still carry some torch of hope for humanity, press
   sixteen followed by star.
For sarcasm or wit, don’t press seventeen whatever you do.
To speak to a customer service representative, call the
   premium number between 10 AM and 10.30 AM on Monday,
   Tuesday and Thursday.
To return to the main menu please text the words ‘Egyptian
   Mummification in the Predynastic Period’ to 666 or hold the
   line while we drill holes in your ear.
Thank you for banking with easyBank.com, finance at your fingertips.

Jim Ferris: “For Crippled Things”


How good was The Hospital Poems, Jim Ferris’ first poetry collection from Main Street Rag? So good that I loaned it to an otherwise responsible friend and I haven’t seen it since. Ferris writes with a biting wit and raw honesty about the experience of disability, fighting to reclaim his dignity from the fix-it authoritarians of the medical establishment. From early childhood, he endured multiple surgeries to correct bone deformities, but even as the doctors labored to make his body more “normal”, the stigma and strangeness of institutional life imposed their own unique twists and scars on his soul.

I’ve just ordered his new collection Slouching Towards Guantanamo, from which the poem below is reprinted by permission. Main Street Rag is a great indie press in Charlotte, NC that publishes poetry and literary prose. Their authors have a fresh contemporary voice and a social conscience. Support MSR by pre-ordering their new releases. Early birds get a discount.

FYI, this poem is a take-off on Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Pied Beauty“.

For Crippled Things

    
Once I turned from thee and hid.
        –Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for crippled things —
For minds as sharp as cracked concrete;
For flab that sags, for joints and thoughts that will not come unstuck;
Forgotten lessons, wisdom . . . what? Nothing.
Growths that thrive and work left incomplete;
All legs grow tired, all clocks their hands get stuck.

All things imperfect, asymmetric, strange;
Whatever is transient, moaning, full aware that they’re hamstrung meat;
Lost pieces of walk talk see hear laugh run good luck;
He must love the lame — he made us in so wide a range;
We are his joy, his music all we sing;
Our praise is in our flux.

My Interview on the Mass Cultural Council ArtSake Blog


Last year I was honored to receive a fellowship for poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Since then my gratitude has only increased, to see the publicity support that the MCC gives its fellows and finalists. In conjunction with our reading last week at Forbes Library in Northampton, the MCC’s Dan Blask interviewed me on their ArtSake blog. Here’s a sample:

ArtSake: Along with your poetry, you also write fiction and nonfiction. Do you approach writing prose differently from the way you approach poems?

Jendi: Yes, definitely! Poetry and fiction must be written by hand with a mechanical pencil in a 6×9 Mead Five Star notebook. Nonfiction, by which I mean my blog posts about gay rights and Christianity, is written on the computer. I don’t know how to shape a narrative in creative nonfiction. There are too many facts, and most of them were hard enough to live through once.

When I write poetry, I’m not thinking about an audience. What wants to be written, gets written. It’s like a computer’s self-diagnostic. I write to find out what I think. Naturally, my values and preoccupations are reflected in the poetry, so in that sense, it often contains a critique of society, but it’s driven by my own need to express my authentic inner experience, rather than to have a particular impact on others. (Though I wonder whether the two are really so separable – doesn’t every self-disclosure cherish a tiny hope of being recognized and responded to in kind, however much one tries to cultivate self-protective detachment?)

My novel-in-progress is about a young fashion photographer in 1990s NYC who struggles to reconcile his faith and his sexual orientation. With this project, I have more of a conscious intention to bring about social change, along with telling an entertaining story.

Writing a novel is harder than poetry because it’s impossible to be in the “flow” for that length of time. With a poem, by the time I figure out where my subconscious is taking me, the trip’s over. I don’t have much opportunity to get in my own way. Far more planning has to go into the novel, which means that there are many chances for self-consciousness and ideological agendas to seize control, instead of letting the work tell me, itself, what it needs to be. I counteract this problem by conceiving of the novel as a collaborative effort between myself and my characters. They’ve got to retain the freedom to surprise me. My job is to see enough of the big picture so that they don’t get lost and despondent, but not be so directive that they lose their independent life force. It is a constant, elaborate, frustrating, fascinating dance that calls on all my relationship skills, and maybe even improves them in the so-called real world.

I do my creative writing by hand because this slower, temporally linear method allows intuition to take the lead. Writing on the computer, it’s too easy to pull back and see the big picture, to let the analytical mind start rearranging and criticizing, and skip past that quiet inwardness where the soul of the poem or story gestates.
…

Read the rest here. Videos of myself and my talented co-readers Rosann Kozlowski, Nancy K. Pearson, Cynthia Morrison Phoel, and Jung Yun are available on the Winning Writers YouTube channel.



My Poem “not with the old leaven” Now Online at the St. Sebastian Review


My poem “not with the old leaven” is now online in the first issue of the St. Sebastian Review, a new literary journal for GLBTQ Christians and allies. Yes, we do exist! As editor Carolyn E.M. Gibney says in her introduction:

Many times over this past year, in the midst of my clumsy attempts to get this journal going (It’s sort of
felt like learning stick shift all over again: You think you’ve got it, then you lurch forward violently for a
few seconds, sit stunned for a moment, and start the damn car once more.), I’ve had people – mostly
genuinely concerned and gentle people – ask me: Why would you create a journal for queer Christians?
How many of you are there?

My answer is always the same: Twelve. There are twelve of us. (At this point in the conversation I smile
and tell them I’m kidding. Which I am. Mostly.)

It’s true that this seems like a bit of a strange niche. Queer Christians tend to fall into the section of the
Venn diagram that most people either A) don’t think exists (which in most cases is easily rectifiable), or B)
vehemently deny is metaphysically possible. ‘You can’t be gay and Christian!’ they say.

Word on the street, though, is that metaphysics can only take you so far. (Buy Martin a beer and he’ll tell
you why, in the end, he never could finish Being and Time.) And, in any case, the problem, unfortunately,
has never been metaphysical. The problem is not whether gay Christians can or should exist. The problem
is that we do exist, and that people still consider our existence a metaphysical question.

The question of being queer and Christian is deeply, terribly physical. And immanent. And quotidian. (‘See
my hands?’ I would like to say back. ‘See, here: Touch the wound in my side.’)

That’s partly why I started this journal. I want to affirm that the question of the intersection of queer and
Christian has moved, must move – entirely and completely – from the realm of the metaphysical to the
realm of the ethical. The question, now, dear friends, as I’m sure you already know, is not ‘What?” but
‘How?’


The issue is available for download as a PDF here.

Videos from Green Street Cafe Poetry Reading with Mark Hart and Jendi Reiter


Last week I shared the stage with poet and Buddhist teacher Mark Hart at a reading at Northampton’s Green Street Cafe. I would do the job for the free dinner alone. If you weren’t there, you’ll just have to imagine the roast duck and polenta, but you can feast your other senses on the videos now posted on the Winning Writers YouTube channel. 

Here’s a clip of me reading “World’s Fattest Cat Has World’s Fattest Kittens”, which won 2nd Prize in the 2007 Utmost Christian Writers Poetry Contest. Mamas (and daddies), don’t let your babies grow up to be writers.